Issue 5, April 2010
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Ginny Buccelli
I read somewhere, or maybe saw it on a sitcom, that our lives are only complicated because subconsciously we wish them to be. While I see some truth in this, I certainly had no control over how many times my parents were married—to each other or to other people. It’s a simple question, but when asked if I have any siblings, I just can’t answer simply.
I can answer yes: I am the oldest of three, the youngest of two, the oldest of two, and the middle of three, four, five and seven.
Or I can answer no, because I was raised as an only child.
In a very real sense, I have six siblings, or two, or one, or none depending on which family configuration we’re talking about. I was raised as an only child by my grandparents and (simply) have no siblings to share both parents with.
Not that sharing either of my parents is something any child would aspire to. My mother, Mary, managed to stay committed to her last husband, Lloyd, for more than ten years. Ten years is noteworthy when taking into account that Lloyd was Mary’s eighth husband.
Mary gave birth to three children; ultimately she raised none of us. My father was her first husband. They were legally married three years and eight months. While she was waiting for the divorce from him to come through, she was briefly married (sixteen days by her count) to some nameless wonder. When I asked her why only sixteen days, her reply was, “Well, I didn’t want to be married to him anymore.” Ah. Sounds simple enough.
After the nameless wonder came Bill. With Bill, Mary had two more children. (Three in all, of which I am the oldest.) Many women choose to name their sons after the father. My mother’s view of this idea was slightly askew. So my brother shares his same name with his older half brother from Bill’s previous relationship. They are both William Albert, Billy for short. The IRS must have a field day with these two.
My sister has a more creative name, but only because I begged my mother to use the name I wanted. My sister’s name is Bambe. In my defense, I was all of ten years old when she was born, and had never actually seen the Disney movie. Had I seen it, I might have seen the irony in naming a child after a deer who was ultimately left motherless. My mother took weeks making her decision and eventually settled on my choice, a first name that would allow my sister to fulfill every stereotype that might come to mind—and a few more besides. Last I heard, Bambe was living in a California women’s prison.
After leaving Bill, Billy and Bambe, my mother married five more times. One husband’s name was Ross, which was also her maiden name. And I remember a Butch. She never did marry Skip. Skip was my father’s best friend. After Mary and my Dad broke up, she lived with Skip for a time (I believe that this was after the nameless wonder). This is before Skip married Sharon who married my father, making her my current stepmother.
I realize this is beginning to sound like a soap opera, so I should make a few things clear. None of my parents or their friends or lovers or husbands or wives dressed nearly as nicely as Erica Kane does on All My Children. Nor do most of them have the same kind of taste in mates as the oft-married soap diva. My mother’s standards were much lower: she didn’t require they have a job, a place to live—or a full set of teeth.
At sixteen my father married his fifteen-year-old girlfriend in a shotgun wedding. I’m not sure if this is before or after he ran off to join the circus where he was an acrobat for a time. To simplify, let’s assume that he married his first wife after he came home. My half-sister Debbie was the product of that marriage (this makes me the youngest of two). I have no memory of meeting Debbie, although my mother claimed we were great friends when we were very small. I have spoken to Debbie on the phone twice. The second conversation was devoted entirely to giving me marital advice, specifically why not to get married. This was just after paying for the release of her boyfriend from the immigration service and marrying him so that he wouldn’t be deported to Mexico—again. They had a daughter together, which I believe rounded out her brood to five. Did I mention that when she was eighteen, my sister weighed almost three hundred pounds and used to hang out down at the docks waiting for the coast guard ships to come into port? That’s quite a visual. Like her mother, she had several children with several different fathers.
My son says that writing my family history is like doing a Mad Lib that has gone horribly wrong.
There is one type of education that rarely happens in families: when children learn from their parents’ mistakes. I am pleased to be an exception to this rule. One important lesson I have learned is that tattoos are permanent and it is faster and cheaper to tattoo over them than to have them removed. My father was so in love with one woman (not one of his wives) that he had her name tattooed on his upper arm. Like a message etched on the trunk of a tree it reads:
Jack
+
Carol
After Jack and Carol broke up, he fell in love with Jean. Jean didn’t like that Carol’s name was on his arm, so he had the name covered.
Jack
+
Carol
Jean
At some point after my parents divorced, my father moved to Oklahoma. He married a woman named Joyce. Joyce had two daughters, Gail and Diana. I have never met, nor spoken to, Gail and know no stories about her. From what little I can glean, she and I are the most stable of the lot. Joyce didn’t like Jean, so the list grew.
Jack
+
Carol
Jean
Joyce
Not surprisingly, the marriage fell apart. Shortly after Jack and Joyce’s divorce was final, however, they remarried. Thus we have:
Jack
+
Carol
Jean
Joyce
Joyce
After their second divorce, Joyce was again crossed out and Lynn was added. Lynn is still the last name on the list on my Dad’s arm. Sharon (you remember her, she is my current stepmother) refuses to have her name added to the list. Her logic: See what happens when you get added to the list? Sharon and Jack were married over twenty years.
Sharon has a daughter named Susan from her first marriage to Andy (we’re talking no teeth at all). Sharon and Andy married at their own shotgun wedding when she was seventeen and he was eighteen. This is the marriage before Skip. (You remember Skip, my Dad’s best friend?) Skip and Sharon were married for ten years after Sharon and Andy divorced. After Skip, Sharon married my Dad. Susan has carried on her mother’s legacy by having a child by her older boyfriend (he had teeth, but no job) although to her credit, Susan has not married. (With Susan as my step-sister, this puts me in the oldest of two category, unless you include my older half-sister Debbie, which makes me the middle of three.)
My Dad attempted to help raise all of his stepchildren. He lived with Diana and Gail when they were small and Diana lived with him when she moved to California as a young adult. Susan lived with Dad and Sharon for quite awhile. Even my sister Bambe lived in a camper shell in my Dad’s yard for a couple years when Bambe’s Dad was ill, sometime after my mother had left the area. Keep in mind that my sister Bambe is more of a retro-stepdaughter to my dad, having been born to a different father after my parents divorced.
So in all I have five sisters, half or step, and one half-brother. My mother once told me in confidence that my Dad had a son by an old girlfriend (when did the man have time to work? Or sleep?) that he wouldn’t acknowledge as his. I have not seen or heard anything else about this phantom sibling, and so don’t have enough information to add him to my list. From youngest to oldest we are: Bambe, Billy, Diana, Susan, Ginger (that’s me!), Gail and Debbie.
Or, it’s as simple as just me.
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